


gatsby, buzzcuts, and the women's 4x100m freestyle

by jolt



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/F, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-08 17:32:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16433789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jolt/pseuds/jolt
Summary: “There’s Hyman,” Auston points out, andHyman? Is she joking?“Hyman’s not a freestyler,” Willy answers immediately, with a scoff. She considers Hyman’s track record before adding, “Not to mention, has never been on a relay.”“We’re a little low on options, here,” Auston says, prying a banana from her backpack and peeling it. She breaks off a third and hands it to Willy, who takes it without thinking. She gives another third to Mitch, before finishing the rest of it in two bites.Honestly, the only other major thing Auston’s done as captain this season is start every conversation with “This is your captain speaking,” in an old-timey pilot voice that only ever makes Mitch laugh, so. Willy is willing to give her the benefit of the doubt on this one.“She’ll have to try out for it,” Willy agrees, finally, and Auston grins.(Or, Willy shaves off her hair, does her English homework (for once), and falls in love. Almost precisely in that order.)





	gatsby, buzzcuts, and the women's 4x100m freestyle

**Author's Note:**

> THIS IS FICTION!! COMPLETE AND UNDER FICTIONAL NONSENSE!! (Aka, if you or your friends are mentioned, maybe just turn away. And also, please don't share this, like, outside of fandom spaces PLEASE)
> 
> So, hey. This wasn't meant to be this long. It also wasn't meant to be written front-to-back BEFORE the 287398127 other wips I've got going on, but *shrugs*? That being said, I wrote this pretty hastily so please forgive any major jumps in logic and/or spelling errors.
> 
> Everyone's a girl in this one! And they're all on a high school swim team! So, I guess it bears mentioning that, yeah, this is my first attempt at rule 63 and I hope I didn't contribute a complete abomination to the tag. If I did, just let me know gently.
> 
> Also, some things may be triggery or triggery-adjacent? Willy doesn't have the best relationship with her mother, for example. Also, quite a bit of reflection on looks (esp of the feminine-coded kind), how identity is perceived as being tied up with looks, rejecting that notion and feeling maybe guilty about it? There are a lot of under-developed concepts in here, and I apologize in advance for not fleshing all of them out.

“ _New year, new you_ isn’t something people usually take literally.”

Auston says it as if Willy has ever, for a second in her life, thought about the consequences of her actions past the immediate reaction.

Willy just grunts in response, and goes about her business tacking up a flyer announcing swim team tryouts to the bulletin board in the humanities hallway. The school year just started - _just_ , as in, five minutes ago - and real estate on the precious humanities bulletin board is already pitifully scant.

Auston continues, “Personally, I think it suits you,” she says, and Willy just scoffs. “But, dude, nobody’s gonna recognize you.”

Willy reshuffles the rest of her flyers in her folder, which she sticks back in her backpack. She starts walking towards the next bulletin board without waiting for Auston to catch up. “You know, Matts, just because my hair’s gone, doesn’t mean I’m a different person.”

In part, that’s a lie. Willy had, naturally, buzzed off all her hair in the middle of the night before the start of the new school year to spite her mother. Any other time in her life, under any other combination of stars, she’d never have dared to do something like shave off the tresses of blonde hair that got her voted _Most likely to be a model_ in last year’s round of team superlatives. Previous iterations of her innermost self have held too high a regard for the opinion of her peers, her competition, and, regretfully, her mother. But they’d had a fight, because her mom wouldn’t stop asking about when she was going to get her highlights retouched and Willy snapped. Besides, something about senior year has Willy throwing all her fucks out the window. Auston just wouldn’t understand. Her parents are so nice and nonjudgmental and her hair has always been slightly too unruly to rival Willy’s.

Willy can and will still be petty about her hair, even when most of it is currently sitting at the bottom of the wastebasket beside her dresser.

“And, anyway, it’s not like there’s anything I can do about it, now.”

Her mom was obviously horrified, but Alex liked it, so that had to count for something.

“Mom’s just pissed that now I can’t be, like, her fucking doll anymore.” Willy had been ranting the entire drive to school that morning. She was hoping to slip out before getting caught, but of course, they’d had to have an explosive fight over their avocado toast.

Alex just hummed from the passenger seat. He was pretty unfazed when Willy knocked on his bedroom door shortly before midnight last night to return his clippers with absolutely no hair on her head. “Yeah, but she’ll get over it. You look badass.”

Alex was right. Willy looks badass. _As fuck_. But looking badass in the private world of Nylander morning car rides to school and in the larger context of senior year at a competitive high school are, probably, two separate things.

So, now Willy has a buzzcut and she’s mostly happy about it, all things considered. She was never, like, _tied_ to her long hair, or to the idea of having long hair, and she’s been a swimmer long enough to have absolutely considered shaving it off in the past. But what she didn’t fully consider when she closed her shaking hands around the clippers and pointed it to her hairline was how other people would react. People besides her mother.

Coach hadn’t said anything. But then, she wasn’t exactly expecting Babcock to involve himself in the affairs of his swimmers’ hair unless it affected their times. And that has yet to be shown.

Instead, he insisted she help with tryouts, this season, and handed her a stack of last year’s flyers with the date scratched out and changed, for her to stick up around school. The whole manual edit made her a little concerned with the funding for public schools these days, until she figured Babs most likely didn’t want to bother waiting for a student to help him draft new flyers.

They’d come close to a championship title last year, and Willy’s star had sharply risen when she’d proven herself a worthy anchor to the freestyle relay. But, once again, their team is down some key swimmers after the latest round of seniors graduated. There’s a gap in the relay, now that Mo’s gone. Hence the need to recruit early in the year.

 

* * *

 

“I’m a little grounded.”

Mitch’s eyebrows shoot up. “What’s _a little grounded_?”

Tryouts only start next week, but Babs insisted on an early start to practice for all returning swimmers. That includes Willy, hanging out on the bleachers by the pool with Auston and Mitch.

Hyman’s there, too, not quite part of their group. Reading a book. Homework on the first day of school. Who _does that_?

“Well, like, not grounded enough to be banned from swim team, or anything.”

“It’s _hair_ , though,” Mitch shrieks, disbelieving.

“That’s my mom for ya,” Willy says with a bite.

“I think it’s empowering,” Hyman pipes in, and frankly, it’s rude to eavesdrop, but Willy appreciates the sentiment.

“ _Thank you_ ,” she says, swinging one leg over the bleacher so she can angle Zach more into the conversation.

“I think you’re nuts for trying to mess with your mom this early into the school year, but yeah. Girl power.” Mitch weakly puts up a fist while rolling her eyes.

Auston shoves her. Willy doesn’t care all that much. It’s not like anything Mitch could have said would’ve stopped her from taking Alex’s clippers to her skull, anyway.

“You should’ve left all your chopped up hair on her pillow or something.”

“Like a fucking serial killer?” Willy laughs. “God, even I don’t hate my mom that much.”

Zach’s still eyeing her homework, but a small smile has spread across her face.

Willy reconsiders, “Although, I did kind of kill all her hopes and dreams for me.”

“Were all her hopes and dreams really tied to your hair?” Zach asks, suddenly, closing her book but holding the page with her index finger.

Willy doesn’t really wanna share her former-Swedish-model Mother Complex (capital letters) with Hyman ten minutes before practice start, but she figures enough of that is already pretty visible, besides. “She just, like, never used to shut up about my looks,” Willy says, as nonchalantly as she can with three pairs of eyes on her. She’s acutely aware that her talking about her mommy issues makes the people around her as uncomfortable as she feels. “She wanted me to look like her, and be the homecoming queen again, and a bunch of shit like that.”

Zach looks embarrassed, and Willy gets that. She doesn’t actually hate her mother, but there’s enough tension between them to stir pity in even the people Willy’s barely spoken to, apparently. “That’s really...intense. And unfortunate.”

Willy shrugs. She’s right, so.

“How does it feel?” Zach asks.

Latching onto the opportunity to lighten the fucking mood, Willy answers, “Fuzzy.”

She drags the palm of her hand over the short, ticklish bits of what was once her most defining feature. It draws a laugh from the ever-elusive Hyman’s lips, while Mitch and Auston just roll their eyes at her.

 

* * *

 

They place third in their first meet, fourth in their second, and then third again in their third. Willy wishes she had her hair back for a moment, just so she could tear it all out again.

None of the new fourth swimmers quite click. Sure, it’s a heavy plate to step up to, and expectations are going to be high whether it’s a veteran swimmer joining them or someone in their freshman year.

“We’re fucked,” Mitch announces at the tail end of their team meeting, when most people have filtered out already. Luckily, they’re the only three swimmers left, so none of the unfortunate alternates are within earshot.

The meeting mostly consisted of passive aggressive pep talks and incredibly thinly-veiled comments about disappointment and a lack of scouting that will come from a performance like theirs. Unfortunately, coming up short in the women’s relay hasn’t helped this year’s championship campaign.

Willy lets out a deep breath and hunches forward to rest her forearms on her thighs. She didn’t want to put it in so many words, but, _yeah_.

“ _Language_ ,” Coach insists, but the three of them ignore him.

“So, Kapanen’s out,” Willy says with a shrug. She and Kappy go way back, but it apparently doesn’t mean shit.

“Dermott, too,” Mitch adds.

“We need a fourth.”

“There’s Hyman,” Auston points out, and _Hyman_? Is she joking?

“Hyman’s not a freestyler,” Willy answers immediately, with a scoff. She considers Hyman’s track record before adding, “Not to mention, has never been on a relay.”

“We’re a little low on options, here,” Auston says, prying a banana from her backpack and peeling it. She breaks off a third and hands it to Willy, who takes it without thinking. She gives another third to Mitch, before finishing the rest of it in two bites.

Honestly, the only other major thing Auston’s done as captain this season is start every conversation with “This is your captain speaking,” in an old-timey pilot voice that only ever makes Mitch laugh, so. Willy is willing to give her the benefit of the doubt on this one. She’s right about not having much else in the way of choice, but Willy wants their empty relay slot to be filled by someone who can keep up with the three-headed monster vibe they’ve got going on, not someone who just keeps pace or, worse, who they’d have to carry.

“She’ll have to try out for it,” Willy agrees, finally, and Auston grins.  


* * *

 

 

Hyman is fine. A little quiet, a little bookish and pretty dry, but she’s nice. In her sophomore year, she set a school record for the 200 back, so she’s also a pretty talented swimmer. She has been known to tear up a 400 IM as well, but again, probably on the merit of her absolutely fucked up insane backstroke. She’s just not a freestyler in the strict, championship-winning sense of the word.

Willy’s had her fair share of bitchy thoughts to have absolutely thought of Hyman as a background character to the great Marner-Matthews-Nylander saga of varsity swimming. In almost exactly those terms. It’s not something she’s proud of, but she hasn’t exactly been the nicest, or the most welcoming, to people who aren’t her immediate and closest friends. That may be why Coach named Auston captain instead of Willy.

 

* * *

 

“For the record,” Willy says to Hyman, “I hope this works out.”

Hyman’s mouth twists into a wry smile. “Yeah, that would be nice.”

Coach assembles the two relay teams, and the rest of the team huddles closer around the edge of the pool, cheering incoherently. Kappy and Dermott are back on Relay 2, which is maybe for the best, but Willy’s stomach is all messed up even from the pressure of a simulation race. She really does want this to work, doesn’t want to burn their way through alternates until they’ve steadily sunk down the rankings.

Zach’s taking her time getting set up, slowly pulling her bathing cap from where it’s been tucked into the hip of her swimsuit.

“I don’t really have to practice with one of those, anymore,” Willy says, à propos of kind of nothing. It’s been pretty liberating, actually.

“Sure,” Zach agrees, and then flips her head over and presses her ponytail to the crown of her head. “Would you mind?”

Willy takes a deep breath, but slides the cap over Zach’s head with her assistance. Zach adjusts it a little, fiddles to pull the silicone over the tips over her ears and Willy’s transfixed, just watching her.

And —

Has she always been that pretty?

She hasn’t, Willy decides. No way. Willy would have noticed, if she had been.

Right?

 

* * *

 

They put Hyman on the relay.

Because she kicks _ass_ , that’s why. Willy absolutely refuses to entertain any other reasons.

 

* * *

 

Willy’s always been the kind of swim-team-first-homework-second, kind of student. Dubas, who everyone nicknamed _Dubious_ because of how he’s too completely handsome and young-looking to ever want to legitimately teach English to a bunch of bratty high schoolers, has been trying to lecture them on _The Great Gatsby_ for what feels like an entire lifetime. Willy admits she hasn’t paid a whole lot of attention in class, distracted by _what’s for lunch_ and _is Alex dating that girl he’s always texting_ and _should they reorder the relay at the meet next week_? He assigned them the first five chapters for reading, like, a week ago, but, because Willy has a relay to resuscitate and a mother to avoid, she didn’t do it.

And of course, with everything else going on, she also forgot they had a quiz on it today.

“ _Hyms_ ,” Willy hisses, and Hyman, who sits two up and one over, turns around with a look that’s somehow both indignant and indulgent. “Help me.”

They have precisely two minutes before class starts.

Hyman is pretty benevolent, all things considered, because she just stands up and moves to occupy the empty desk in front of Willy. She gives Willy an expectant look as she does so, and, okay, it’s kind of adorable, which fucking sucks.

But, back the point, “I don’t know what this book is about.”

“I mean, you should’ve just, like, done the reading.”

“Oh, really? That’s what I should’ve done?” Willy snarks in a sharp, mocking tone.

Zach just shakes her head, not quite fond, but not condemning, either. “You’re unbelievable,” she says.

Willy doesn’t take it too personally, though, because Zach summarizes the first half of the book for her in a hushed, patient voice with the use of a diagram she draws on a sheet of Willy’s loose leaf. Zach’s nails are painted this sparkly rose gold colour that Willy kind of wants to cop and she smells like warm flower blossoms. Probably from her deodorant, Willy figures.

“How did you find time to read all this?” Willy asks, disbelieving, once Zach has finished her synopsis.

“I don’t know how to answer that without sounding like an asshole, but I just did the reading.”

Willy quirks an eyebrow and makes a move to hit Zach’s arm lightly. Zach shifts at the exact moment Willy extends her hand, and she ends up brushing Zach’s shoulder, fingers catching in the soft loose strands of her hair that rest there. Willy retracts her hand as if she just touched embers, feeling herself warm in a weird and pretty uncalled for way.

She gets a 70 on the quiz, though, and counts it as a win.

 

* * *

 

Willy realizes she’s fucked at land training that afternoon.

Zach’s hair is pulled into a ponytail that falls just past her shoulder blades. _God,_ it looks like it smells so good. Willy realizes that’s a creepy thought to be having in the middle of running track, because what the hell, she needs to stop having thoughts about how Hyman _smells_ , but she’s genuinely having a panic attack over it. It swishes back and forth while she runs, and catches the sun with a gleam in its sandy blonde waves. Willy can’t tell if it makes her nostalgic for her own hair of if it just makes her want to, like, _live_ in Hyman’s unfathomably beautiful hair. Either way, it’s so, _so_ stupid, and Willy has no choice but to shake the thought from her fuzzy head and run and run and run and run.

 

* * *

 

On the weekend, Willy decides to do her homework.

Maybe it’s the buzzcut that’s been making her reevaluate the way she lives her life and, by extension, her academic integrity. And, like, it’s obviously not because Hyman told her to. If anything, it’s because of the Gatsby essay due on Wednesday and because as in depth as Schmoop is, it still doesn’t make as much sense as Hyman’s loose leaf diagram. And, what the hell, she needs to keep her GPA up to even be on the swim team in the first place, so what does it hurt, really?

Willy opens the book and finishes it in one sitting. She keeps getting tangled in the prose, feeling like she’s too clumsy to understand it all. But then —

_There I was, way off my ambitions, getting deeper in love every minute, and all of a sudden I didn't care._

And —

 _Huh_ , Willy thinks. And then she writes her essay.

 

* * *

 

As a reward for turning in their first essays of the semester, Dubas lets them watch movie adaptation _The Great Gatsby_. The dazzling, huge one with Leo DiCaprio that feels like so much at times, Willy has to look away.

The lights in the classroom dimmed, Willy finds her eyes trailing to Zach, two up and one across from Willy. In the dark, the light of the movie glitters off the screen and lands in Zach’s eyelashes.

Oh, Willy thinks.

 _Oh_.

 

* * *

 

The meet on Thursday is a blur. Mainly because it feels like everything is riding on this relay. Discovering chemistry in practice isn’t a guarantee that it’ll translate in a meet. But they’ve been through too many backfires for this not to feel like the be-all, end-all.

Willy’s got back-to-back events, and barely has time to guzzle down half a blue Gatorade before Coach is shepherding them into the marshalling area. The other girls are already in their caps, each wearing their team jackets over their suits. Mitch is chewing on the end of her goggles, and Auston’s in her own world with her comically large headphones bracketing her head. Only Zach looks remotely calm, which is funny, since she’s got the most to prove in this race. Willy can’t sit still before a race, and tonight’s no exception. She can’t sit on the bench for too long without feeling like her legs are going to sprout rockets and shoot her into space, so she leaps up to do a few self-contained jumps and stretches, like she does before every race.

By the time Willy’s finished, Mitch and Zach are sussing out the competition.

“What about them?” Zach asks. Willy follows her line of sight and sighs. Northview.

“They’re fast. Probably our biggest competition,” Mitch whispers conspiratorially.

“McAvoy’s not a freestyler by nature, though,” Zach says.

“Neither are you,” Willy feels compelled to point out. She immediately wishes she could shove her foot in her mouth or something, because Zach just glares at her, as if trying to remind her of the fact that in practice, they’d met last year’s time. She’s admittedly pretty cute when she glares, but Willy has a feeling that’s not the point.

“ _Anyway_.” Mitch coughs, and then they get the signal to line up behind the blocks.

Relay has become Willy’s reluctant favourite event. The thing with swimming is it’s a individual sport. You belong to a team and you theoretically compete against other swimmers, but the person you’re constantly trying to beat is yourself. It’s harrowing, frustrating, and completely exhilarating. That principle kind of gets put on hold during the relay. In a relay, it’s you and three other girls against the world. Swimming becomes a team sport, in those few short minutes, and it’s do or die.

“Okay,” Auston says, peeling off her jacket and fastening her goggles to her head. “Tonight, we’re taking back this god forsaken relay.”

“ _Yeah_ ,” Mitch agrees, pounding her fist into her other open palm. “We’re gonna be mopping the floor with them. We’re gonna be so far ahead of them, they’ll have to kiss our asses goodbye.”

Willy adds, “ _Bye_ -sexual. Get it?”

Zach’s laugh is a loud snort that changes her whole face, but in a really pleasant sort of way.

Willy coughs. “But, uh.” She scratches the back of her neck, gazing into the middle distance so she doesn’t have to feel all fluttery at the sight of Zach’s face, still scrunched up in a laugh. “Yeah. Go team,” she finishes, lamely.

The sounds of whistles, officials’ voices in the loudspeaker, and beeping all bleed into one, so familiar they’re like her own pulse. The second the first leg of girls leap from the diving block, all the cheering in the distance fades to white noise as Willy zeroes in on the race.

Auston’s taller than a lot of other girls their age, and she’s trained herself to make that an advantage. She manages to snag them a decent advantage that’s only extended when Mitch follows her leg. Despite everything going on, the onslaught of sensations and excitement and panic, Willy hopes Zach does well. She’s stepping up on the diving block, snapping her arms and legs in anticipation, and Willy says a prayer to Poseidon that this works.

Willy can barely fathom how fast Hyman’s swimming. She literally doesn’t have time to process it, Zach’s figure off in the distance at the other end of the pool while the girls around her are barely at the fifty meter mark. Pretty soon, Willy has to step onto the block and prepare herself for the takeover. Willy’s mind shuts off the instant she hits the water. Swimming is like that, for her. It doesn’t clear her mind so much as it just lets her exist in this temporary, luminal space for a few minutes. This place where she just _flies._ In the final fifty meters, Willy’s instinct kicks in. She starts to kick her feet more insistently, using her arms to drag her skillfully through the water. She takes one breath every five strokes, keeping her head down to save time even though she’s desperate for breath. Peripherally, she’s aware of other swimmers around her, but she has no way of gauging how close they are.

Willy hits the wall and immediately feels the rush of blood in her ears, her muscles liquifying. In a move powered almost exclusively by adrenaline, she rips off her cap and goggles in one swift motion, dunking her head back into the water to cool down before looking around.

She’s the first to finish by almost three seconds.

It filters in, more slowly, the fact that Zach, Mitch, and Auston have all but shoved the timer and officials out of the way, and are all shouting incoherently. Mitch can’t stop slapping the diving block.

Willy hauls herself out of the pool with the last of her upper body strength and sits on the edge of the pool while she catches her breath. Zach nudges her shoulder and passes her a bottle of water. She’s absolutely beaming, and Willy feels dizzy with it.

 

* * *

 

They place first in the meet.

 

* * *

 

“Silent killer, over here,” Willy says, afterwards, when they’re changing. She juts her thumb in Zach’s general direction, sliding off the straps of her suit and rubbing at the tender skin on her shoulders that’s red from where the fabric was digging into her.

“That’s her new nickname - ” Mitch calls from her locker, just as Zach, quieter, says, “Like carbon monoxide.”

Willy is still adrenaline edged enough to find that _hilarious_. “What does that even _mean_ , oh my god.”

Zach just blushes, turning to wrap her hair in a towel. _Fuck_ , she’s so pretty, Willy can’t stop looking. She’s never wanted to look at another human being this bad in her _life_ , and not just because Zach’s leg of the relay pushed them even closer to beating the provincial record.

“How you getting home, Hyman?” Willy asks, just to have something to say.

“My mom’s coming to get me,” Zach answers.

“Don’t you live, like four blocks away from me?” Willy asks. She doesn’t explain that she remembers this from their community pool swim team days

“Yeah, up on Bloomfield.”

Willy kicks a the corner of a locker. “I could give you a lift. Save your mom the trip?”

“Yeah?” Hyman sounds skeptical, so Willy nods firmly.

“Yeah, of course.”

“Okay, I’ll text her.”

The sun has long since been tugged towards the horizon by the time they’re all done and changed. The last whispers of daylight streak out across the sky in aimless oranges and pinks against the dying blue.

Zach and Willy walk side by side through the student parking lot to Willy’s second-hand Civic. They don’t talk, but Willy for once doesn’t feel like she has to fill the nervous silence that settles between them. She just chucks her swim duffel in the trunk and unlocks the car so Hyman can hop in.

“Must be nice,” Hyman says, suddenly, fiddling with her seatbelt. “Not having super wet hair after swimming, anymore.”

Willy's momentarily winded by Hyman engaging in small talk, but she recovers soon enough. She scratches the hair behind her ear. “That’s gotta be the best part, probably,” she says, starting up the car. She resists the urge to tug at Zach’s wet ponytail. “My hair doesn’t take _hours_ to dry, anymore.”

“It’s smart, honestly,” Zach says, nodding solemnly. “Practical for this sport.”

“I think I’m onto something.”

“I think you are.”

When Willy chances a look out the corner of her eye, Hyman’s looking at the road ahead of them, but there’s something about her that makes it feel like they just carved a space for themselves right here. Not an inside joke, exactly. But something.

The car ride from school to Zach’s house up on Bloomfield takes less than fifteen minutes, and Willy tries not to feel disappointment when Zach motions to a driveway with a basketball net at the foot of it.

“Thanks for the ride. And, you know, for trusting me with your precious relay.” Zach’s chewing her bottom lip and Willy wishes she were braver.

“No problem,” Willy says.

Zach climbs out of the car, bag slung around her right shoulder. And Willy, she can’t just let that be it, so she rolls down the passenger window and leans over. “Hey, uh,” she starts, and Zach turns around. “You’re cool, Hyman.”

Zach gives her a puzzled look that smooths into the trademark smile, the one that makes Willy sees stars. Willy forgets how to breathe temporarily, like her entire being is just suspended in twilight. “Yeah, you too. Nylander.”

The use of Willy’s last name is so ridiculous and uncharacteristic that it cuts the weird tension clean in two, and Willy nearly doubles over laughing. Which is uncomfortable at best when stationed behind the wheel of a vehicle. Zach’s lips tilt up further, watching Willy lose her shit, and it’s so wholly unfair that the meet is over and night is falling and they have to be up at six tomorrow morning. Willy finds herself wishing that everything could just last a little bit longer.

Maybe that’s what compels Willy to say, “Hey, I could give you a lift to school tomorrow, if you want?” She ignores the sound of her heartbeat roaring in her ears.

Zach’s face crinkles up in another smile, one that’s somehow deeper, more meaningful. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Willy repeats, and she slowly turns the key in the ignition. She takes her time shifting the car into drive, and watches as Zach takes a few easy steps backwards up her driveway.

Willy watches Zach give her a little wave in the rearview mirror, and something warm settles in her chest.

It’s like striking gold. What was that line in the book about life starting over in the Fall? Yeah, Willy thinks, it’s something like that.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry that this is kind of pre-relationship-y? I promise I'll write more if you want me to!
> 
> Come talk to me and/or yell at me to finish my wips on my [writing blog](https://oldjolt.tumblr.com)!


End file.
